


the bounty our days contain

by Lauren (LaurenThemself)



Category: Callisto 6 (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Geek & Sundry - Freeform, Geek & Sundry's Shield of Tomorrow (Star Trek), Library Bards, VAST (Web Series), Yuletide, Yuletide 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28109265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaurenThemself/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: Lacy returns to Earth after some time spent gadding about the universe as pure energy, and discovers they may have forgotten some things along the way. Fortunately, there's nothing that the Callisto 6 can't solve.
Relationships: Cassie "Cass" Charke/Luma Orsini, Lacy LaGrangia-Franklin & Luma Orsini
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	the bounty our days contain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [J (jaywright)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaywright/gifts).



> Dear J, I hope that you enjoy this fic! I already had something like it in mind, and then your request helped me solidify it, and then three pages in Cass threw me a plot curveball that made everything a) fall into place and b) decidedly longer than I'd thought it would be!
> 
> Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Beta thanks to Emi and D.
> 
> * * *

Lacy finds a certain kind of peace in being out there in the void, flowing through space and time as simple strings of data or a more organized, nuanced gathering of information. There is so much to see, so much to do; the universe is at their virtual fingertips, and they revel in it. They watch stars be born and grow old and implode or explode; then they watch it all in reverse, because time is optional and nonlinear now.

But Lacy still knows who they are, and Lacy misses Luma.

Like the moon pulls the tide, Luma pulls Lacy back to her.

It begins by simply returning to Raft City, where Luma and Cass have a boat of their own now. It is a small boat, but with room for friends and light and laughter. It has an impossibly tall metal rod the width of a thumb that extends up and up from the mast.

There’s a storm raging the night Lacy visits, and Hopps is standing in the crow’s nest atop the mast, holding the metal rod with one hand and waving down at the deck with the other.

Lightning strikes and Hopps yells with pure glee, her voice whipped away by the wind, as for a moment she literally glows with the energy.

Energy!Lacy strikes the rod next, and Hopps lets out another yell, this one of surprise as she shakes out her free hand, and then physical!Lacy is sitting on the deck beside Luma.

“ _Lacy_?” Luma reflexively reaches for them and then halts. “May I?”

“Of _course_ ,” Lacy says, and Luma swings them up into her arms, clinging tight. Lacy’s arms twine around Luma’s neck and then Cass presses in behind them, warm and laughing with disbelief and delight as she wraps her arms around them both. A loud thud announces Hopps’ arrival on the deck and seconds later she slams into the three of them, hair on end.

“I did _not_ know you could do that,” she says.

“Be pure energy that uses you as a conduit to change form into something that has mass? Does it surprise you?”

“Not really.” Hopps puts her forehead to Lacy’s; Lacy feels the energy humming warm inside her friend and knows that, if Hopps took a sideways step outside of her mass, she could go with Lacy.

“Can we take everyone’s mass inside? It’s cold and I’m hungry,” Cass says.

Inside is small and warm and smells like spices, not quite Luma’s style. Oya’s cooking; she turns and opens her arms and Luma passes Lacy over to her then cuddles in against Lacy’s back. Cass grabs a spoon and starts tasting the delicious-looking rice; Hopps sits down to poke at her tablet with a look of fierce frustration. Lacy doesn’t tell her that they could connect to whoever she’s calling with a blink of their mind; they’re too busy being thoroughly snuggled between Luma and Oya.

In the end it’s just the five of them for dinner, which Lacy appreciates, as they’re not _entirely_ certain _when_ in the lives of the Callisto 6 they have reappeared, and there are multiple reasons that conversation could get quite difficult if they don’t figure it out.

But:

“ _Anton_ ,” Hopps says with fond exasperation, “did you not _hear_ me say Lacy’s here?”

The response from the tablet is crackly, gentle, and indicative of the fact that yes, Anton did hear what Hopps said but, as he is currently on the ISS, he won’t be joining them for arroz con pollo and papas rellenas and a reunion with their dear friend.

That’s good; it means they haven’t returned to Raft City at one of those awkward times—or, gods forbid, one of those awkward _dimensions_ —when Anton... isn’t around.

“What’s he doing up there, anyway?” Lacy asks after Hopps disconnects and resumes her allocated task of, as far as Lacy can see, pulverizing garlic cloves.

“Being extremely useful on spacewalks.” Cass grins. “All he has to do is reach out of the airlock and just grab whatever’s fallen off the ship and stick it back on.”

“That sounds fake.”

“It’s sort of true! Mostly.” Cass relents. “He’s also up there mapping the spread of—of—” She splashes the spoon in the rice, frustrated. “What’s it called?”

“Particulate emissions that might indicate further sources of the Callisto energy in general,” Oya finishes for her, helping Lacy get settled in one of the small seats that flip down from the wall. “Except that, because we can’t exactly tell NASA that, as far as anyone’s concerned he’s just being extremely useful on spacewalks.”

Luma sits down at Lacy’s left, before seeing what Hopps is doing to the garlic and bouncing back to her feet. “Okay, good, okay, I don’t think that garlic can get any more crushed, great job.” She takes the bowl away and hands it off to Cass, who stops stealing spoonfuls of rice and lets Oya explain what she needs to do next for the sauce.

Lacy’s beginning to push the edge of _too noisy_ , _too enclosed_ when Luma comes back, and they can rest their face against Luma’s neck. They feel Hopps begin to move awkwardly away and reach out, putting a hand on her knee; Hopps covers it lightly with her own hand.

Nobody needs to say anything.

Oya begins to bring food over to the table. There’s more than enough for four people; more than enough for five, to be honest. Lacy lifts their head and looks at the array of dishes.

“Did you know you were going to have company?” they ask.

Oya smiles. “I had a feeling.”

Cass clatters plates and flatware onto the table and, despite the small size of the space they’re all in and of the boat in general, everything seems to fit just right. She sits down beside Luma, who steals a kiss; Oya sits opposite Lacy, and Hopps pats Lacy’s hand before reaching for one of the crisp potato balls and stuffing it whole into her mouth.

For a few comfortable minutes the only sounds are of food hitting plates, Oya pouring drinks, Hopps making muffled noises around the potato ball that translate to _this is too hot and I have made a terrible life choice_ , and the steady splash-splash-splash of water against the hull.

Luma breaks the silence.

“Tell us _everything_.”

Lacy grins, picks up their fork, and digs into their rice. “It’ll take a while.”

“We’ve got a while,” Luma says fervently. “We’ve got as long as you want. Do you want to see your dads? Or did you already see your dads? Is there anyone else you want to visit? Do you have to be anywhere? You know we can get you anywhere.”

It would take more time for Lacy to explain how they could be anywhere and anywhen that they want to be than it takes to say, “No. No, this is where I want to be.”

Luma puts an arm around their shoulders and eats with one hand; Lacy puts an arm around her waist and eats with one hand; the food is obligingly of the sort that lends itself to being eaten one-handed.

What Lacy notices, but doesn’t yet comment on, is the simple metal band on Luma’s left ring finger, visible as Luma forks food into her mouth. They don’t know if it’s gold or something else, but a quick glance across the table shows them a matching band on Cass’s left ring finger.

“Did you—” they start.

“We did _not_ get married without you,” Luma says. “We just didn’t want fancy engagement rings that were going to get damaged the first time Cass punched something, so they’re plain.”

“She wouldn’t get me brass knuckles,” Cass grumbles.

“You _are_ brass knuckles,” Hopps says.

Lacy lets the conversation wash over them for as long as they can get away with it before Luma repeats her request.

“Tell us _everything_.”

*

After Lacy has told them as much of everything as they can manage to over the seemingly endless amount of food—the five of them walk dinner off by venturing out to funnel cakes for dessert, and of course the storm has cleared enough to permit such an activity to succeed—they’re exhausted. 

Hopps takes her leave first, splitting off from the five-way hug they find themselves in and bounding off into the night, clearly in need of a run to work off some of the excess energy she’s found herself with. Oya follows at a more sedate pace after inviting them all to visit her for breakfast—it seems that’s a regular occurrence.

“You say that like Hopps _needs_ cafecito to wake her up,” Lacy says.

Oya’s eyes follow Hopps as she moves homeward. “She sleeps _some_ nights,” she says. “And she’s taken to stargazing.”

“Has she now.”

“We all have,” Luma says quietly.

Cass puts a hand on Lacy’s shoulder. “Will you stay with us tonight?” she asks.

“I hadn’t thought about it. I should—my dads—” Lacy looks along the long, long dock, seeing only darkness at their home. Not that it would be any trouble at all to go and wake their dads up, if indeed they’re asleep and not just reading or something else that works better in low, warm light.

“Please,” Cass says. “It would mean a lot.”

Oya presses kisses to everyone’s forehead and walks away, leaving the three of them to figure it out.

“I saw your place. You don’t exactly have a guest bedroom.”

“You can sleep in our bed, with us,” Luma says.

“Or you two can take the bed and I’ll sleep on the deck,” Cass says.

“I think not.” Lacy isn’t prepared to argue all night; they’re too tired. Having mass, having physicality, is wearisome. “We can share the bed.”

Luma bounces on her toes and runs ahead to put mints on the pillow, or something. Cass matches Lacy’s pace; the folding wheelchair that Luma pulled out for Lacy is lightweight, but Lacy’s fallen out of the habit of physically existing, and their arms have forgotten how to be strong.

“You treating her right?” Lacy asks—no, demands.

“Of course.” Cass, who can look and punch like a disgruntled avalanche when she’s particularly angry, doesn’t look even remotely offended. “If I ever stopped, you’d be the first to know.”

“Who proposed, you or her?”

“We both did.” Cass flashes them a grin. “We held out a whole year.” The grin fades a little. “Neither of us wanted to do it when you weren’t around to be the first to know, but... well, Lacy...”

Lacy puts the brakes on, literally, forcing Cass to stop with them. “ _What_?”

“We’ve had this conversation before,” Cass says quietly. “You... you don’t always remember everything that we’ve told you from one time to the next. So... you were the first person we told, once, but also Luma’s family were first, because you... sometimes you glitch out.” She exhales shakily. “Luma’s hoping that if you stay a while with us, it’ll help you remember the things that drop out. Oya said it’s like your hard drive needs defragging. Hopps asked whether we needed to reboot you.”

“Oya knew I was coming tonight.”

“Yeah. I don’t know how, but... yeah. She didn’t know how or exactly when, and we sure weren’t expecting you to materialize via Hopps, but we figured it was a pretty good chance that a big electrical storm would at least get your attention.”

Lacy starts rolling again, Cass walking by their side. They’re silent, troubled by the idea of losing memories. Could it be that when they’ve travelled as energy so much, they’ve failed to put themself back together correctly? Could it be something bigger, more insidious?

“Did Oya say _how_ she thought I could be defragged?”

Cass’s smile returns. “Oh, she’s already started. She cooked tonight so that she could add a bunch of herbs and spices into the food that are supposed to help fight memory loss, and that’s why she asked for cinnamon on the funnel cakes, and she also has a virtual reality scenario that she’s been working on because she wanted to be practical as well as magical.”

“Did _she_ call it magic?” Lacy asks, amused.

“No, Hopps did. Actually, she called it woo-woo, and then Oya reminded her that we’re literal superheroes and that woo-woo is one of the more explicable things in our lives.”

“Is she doing okay?”

“Hopps? She’s fine. She misses Anton. I mean, she still has all of us, but it’s something else when it’s your best friend.”

“Understandable,” Lacy says, rolling their wheelchair up the ramp to the boat where their own best friend is waiting.

*

They sleep snuggled between Cass and Luma, almost lost in a pair of Luma’s pjs, savoring the feeling of solidity and warmth and even the way that Cass tosses and turns for a solid five minutes before she figures out how she wants to settle.

*

And they dream.

*

They are a bat. Or not a bat, but bat-adjacent. They know this, because they can feel their ears; human ears don’t generally stand up this way. 

Luma is with them, and Luma is a cat. Or not a cat, but cat-adjacent. They’re also blessed with an additional two arms, which must be awfully handy.

“Lu-” Lacy starts, but they’re hushed so forcefully that for a moment they wonder if this is Luma at all.

“You need to not argue,” cat!Luma says, and Lacy realizes that wherever they are, it’s dangerous, but they can still see Luma behind those unfamiliar features, and know that right now it’s safest to follow her lead.

Luma runs.

Lacy follows.

*

And.

*

The tavern is incredibly crowded and loud and it’s _horrible_. Lacy finds themself perched on a table that they’d much rather be hiding under given the circumstances. Luma is at the next table over, which is a thoroughly unacceptable distance away, and Lacy half moves to go to her before realizing they’re too surrounded to dismount from the table.

They look around in a panic and realize that Luma’s not the only one there who they know. Hakim Sophia is there, looking a million miles away from her calm news anchor self, braids flying, waving a tankard above her head. Shion is there, gleefully yelling something at the top of their lungs. 

Cass is there... waving a sword? That seems like overkill..

Lacy turns their head and spots Hopps, wearing a gorgeous dress and corset, holding a microphone.

She is, apparently, singing a duet. With _Cobalt_.

Lacy realizes there is a pencil in their hands.

They snap it in half.

*

And.

*

“Oh my gosh, Commander, I’m _so_ sorry—”

Lacy looks down at the spreading puddle of sticky liquid on the table in front of them, and then at Hopps, who is wearing a yellow and gray uniform of some description and a look of utter chagrin.

“It’s all right, Ensign; we’re not going to run out of paper any time soon,” Anton says wryly, dropping a wad of paper towels onto the mess. “Or cream soda, for that matter.”

“As long as she doesn’t do it somewhere _important_.” Luma’s wearing a uniform that matches what Hopps is wearing; when Lacy looks down, their outfit is red and gray, the same as Anton’s.

“Are you saying that my briefing room isn’t important, Chief?”

“Not as important as—” Luma begins heatedly.

“I think we can all agree that everyone has their own personal priorities when it comes to places that cream soda ought not be spilled,” Oya says, and delight tumbles through Lacy’s heart at the sound of her voice. Even in this _when_ and _where_ , Oya is still a voice of calm reason.

Calm reason that’s sent into an immediate tumult when Cass comes flying through the door, antennae twitching wildly—at this point it is somehow unsurprising that she has antennae and also happens to be blue—yelling, “Captain, your communicator had better be somewhere I need to extract it from, because I’ve been trying to reach you for twenty-six minutes!”

“You could have contacted any of us,” Oya points out. Calmly.

“I really needed it to be the Captain.” Cass looks at Lacy. “Commander, did you know you have cream soda on your shirt?”

Lacy reaches for the paper towel, but it’s soaked right through; they pick up a pencil from beside it instead, desperate for something to fidget with.

*

And.

*

They’re all there, they’re _all_ there, sitting at a couple of long desks, and Lacy is so relieved that they reach out and grab Anton’s arm, clinging to him, if only because Luma’s on the far end of the gray, angular parabola.

“Whoa, Sam, are you okay?” Anton asks.

Oya leans past him and puts a hand on Lacy’s hand. “Do you need a minute?”

“Uh, we’re just going to go to break,” an unfamiliar masculine voice says. “I know it’s a little early, but—”

The voice doesn’t trail off; Lacy’s awareness of it just breaks. They’re used to controlling the way they move from place to place, from time to time, and this is not that, not at all, and it’s too much, too _much_.

This is _almost_ the same as the last when-where-dimension. Everyone’s wearing the same uniforms. Cass is no longer blue, and the antennae on her head are clearly a headband rather than anything organic. There isn’t any sticky soda down Lacy’s front any more, which is a small source of relief.

“Are they okay?” Oya’s whispering to Anton.

“I’m not sure,” Anton whispers back. “Get Gina.”

“Gina’s here,” Luma says, and Anton vacates his seat for her. Gina!Luma slides into it, puts an arm around Lacy’s shoulders, and Lacy lets themself lean in and accept the comfort, because once again she can still see _Luma_ behind those worried eyes.

“Eric’s here too, am I chopped liver?” the unfamiliar masculine voice chimes in from Lacy’s left, and a warm hand lands on their shoulder, squeezing gently.

Lacy tenses up in anticipation of flinching away, but it doesn’t happen.

They don’t know this man, this man with slightly greying brown hair and some beard scruff, this man who’s looking down at them with concern and... _adoration_ in his eyes—

—but they _do_ know him. Something about his energy resonates with them; something about him makes them drop the pencil and cover his hand with their own.

*

And.

*

The visions come thick and fast after that. So many people they know appear and disappear in them. Luma is the main constant, but so are Cass and Oya and—and _all_ of them, it seems, as though Lacy’s mind has taken the populace of Los Angeles 2120 and pushed them all out on a stage to perform an endless series of plays, where costume and scene changes happen in the blink of an eye, in the snap of a pencil.

They see their friends live and die as these strangers. They see worlds come to life, sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically. They see relationships flow and ebb across dimensions: sometimes Luma and Cass are together, sometimes not, but there’s always so much _love_ there, because if there is one thing that Lacy’s friends do well it is love, joyously and openly and strongly.

It’s still a tumult of input. Tapping into a single mind would have been a lot. Receiving information from countless sources all at once is impossible to keep up with, even for a superhero. They need help. An army of Sweet Baby duplicates might _almost_ be enough. 

The problem is that they don’t have an army of anything; it’s just them.

*

Maybe, Lacy thinks, they ought not consume so much funnel cake directly before bed.

*

And they wake up.

*

To be perfectly honest they’re _woken_ up, Cass’s voice in one ear and Luma’s in the other, both of them gently but urgently saying, “It’s okay, Lacy, you’re dreaming, it’s okay.” Their bodies are soft and warm, their presence soothing rather than claustrophobic, and Lacy opens their eyes.

“Were you having a nightmare?” Luma asks.

“I was having...” Lacy rubs their eyes. “I was having a _something_.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Cass’s hand is draped over Lacy’s tummy, her body snuggled in behind Lacy’s.

Lacy presses her forehead to Luma’s. “I don’t want to talk about it _now_ ,” they say, feeling Luma’s arm reach over them and Cass both. “After breakfast.”

“Breakfast is a while away,” Luma says. “Are you—do you want to go back to sleep?”

“Not really,” Lacy says, and both women tighten their arms around them.

*

Oya’s apartment smells like cafecito, frying chorizo, and more cafecito, and sounds like Ana Guillén telling her daughter that she loves her, which is a fair warning for Lacy, Luma, and Cass to step back from the door before Oya’s mother comes through it at speed.

“Oh, hello Cass, Luma—Lacy! I haven’t seen you in a while! I’m sorry, I’d stop but—”

“Go on,” the three of them chorus, and Ana whisks away down the hall.

“Come in,” Oya calls from within the apartment.

None of them stand on ceremony, not with the good cooking smells inviting them in.

Inside, Hopps has her arms folded on the table and her head down on her arms. There’s an empty cafecito cup in front of her.”

“Is she awake?” Cass stage-whispers to Oya as Oya brings over the world’s biggest pan of scrambled eggs absolutely bursting with mushrooms, onion, bell peppers, and doubtless some of the memory-enhancing herbs and spices that Oya’s been investigating. Oya goes back to the kitchen and returns with dishes of chorizo and ham ready to add to people’s plates.

“She is _not_ awake,” Hopps says without opening her eyes. “She is asleep. Sound asleep.”

For someone who’s sound asleep, she’s quick to accept a bowl of food and a second cup of cafecito.

“I thought you were sleeping better,” Cass says, brow furrowed.

“Last night was not so great.” Hopps adds chorizo to her bowl and stirs it in, sending up a puff of steam. “I feel like I had a hundred out of body experiences.”

Lacy’s hand squeezes their fork tight. “Were you _you_ in all of them?” they blurt out.

Hopps looks surprised. “Well... no. At least, I don’t think so. I felt like me, but people called me different names, and I wore some really weird stuff. I mean I’ve never worn a corset in my _life_ , but—”

“That’s what woke you up!” Luma says, looking at Lacy. “You had the same dreams, right?”

“I—”

“Did you dream too?” Hopps asks, addressing it to Luma and Cass, who both shake their heads. “Lacy? _Was_ that your dream?”

“Eat your breakfast,” Oya says, setting down a glass of orange juice in front of Lacy. She appears unruffled by the confusion. “I’ve got a scenario ready for us all so that we can look at and hopefully pause if not reverse Lacy’s memory loss, but food first.” She says it so casually, too, as though she’s not discussing broken neural networks and fried synapses, but merely what’s on the breakfast menu.

“Sí, abuela Oya,” Cass teases her.

“I think _I_ might have a scenario,” Lacy says very quietly and, despite the fact that they’re sitting two seats away from Hopps, it seems that Hopps is the only one who hears them, nodding assent before starting in on her second cup of cafecito.

There’s a knock at the apartment door; Oya looks startled and then goes to open it.

“ _Anton_?”

She sounds so genuinely stunned that Lacy cannot believe that this is some conspiratorial surprise that they’ve cooked up somehow.

“Can I come in?” Anton asks.

Hopps’s bowl hits the floor as she flings herself out of her chair, running to enfold her best friend in a tight embrace and then hold him at arms’ length to demand, “ _How_?”

“You wouldn’t believe some of the shit Pyramid Star were getting up to if I told you, and I _can’t_ tell you, because I’ve signed so many NDAs that if I sneeze funny, they’ll kill me.”

Lacy looks at him for exactly twenty-three seconds as Anton sheds his jacket, and then announces, “He wasn’t on the ISS last night.”

“What? Of course he was,” Hopps says, looping her arm through Anton’s and bringing him to the table as Cass retrieves Hopps’s breakfast from the floor and Oya puts out a sixth place setting. “Where else would he have been?”

Anton grins. “Mojave ASP. Undergoing decon and debriefing after getting _back_ from the ISS earlier than intended, which in and of itself was a reason for extra questioning.” He kisses Cass and Luma on the cheek and hovers uncertainly near Lacy. “Telling the people you’re working with that you need to bail early because a friend said she had a vision that another friend was going to be in town _only_ works if you’re a superhero.”

Lacy twists in their chair and grabs him around the middle; Anton stretches his arms and neck so that he can return the embrace without bending down.

“Showoff,” Hopps grumbles.

Anton lets Lacy go and steals a forkful of slightly dusty egg and chorizo from Hopps. “Mmmm, this is good.”

“Why are you working for Pyramid Star?” Lacy asks. “How are they even holding it together? I thought they were done for.”

Anton sits down and begins fixing his own plate of food. “ _With_ , not _for_. Turns out you can make great money as a contractor when you have superpowers.”

“Capitalist shill,” Cass says cheerfully; Anton flicks a piece of mushroom at her.

“Anyway, I wanted to have an eye on the inside of the corps, and I also wanted to get up there and scan for any signs of more of the Callisto 6 energy source.”

“I could have done that,” Lacy says.

“Lacy, you can do _anything_. And you do. The rest of us would also like to occasionally do things as well, see things for ourselves.”

“So when did you land?” Hopps asks.

“About five minutes before you called, which was great, because the amount of electronics up there scrambled your signal enough that you couldn’t tell if I was 250 miles up or 100 miles away.” Anton’s grin widens. “Which meant I could surprise you all.”

There is a tiny part of Lacy’s heart that is unsurprised. Things have a way of unfolding the way they’re _meant_ to around the Callisto 6, even if that means that probability bends a bit, or time and relative distance coincide to bring them together.

*

Full of breakfast, the six of them go through to Oya’s workroom. Almost everything is wireless, green lights all around the room signifying that her VR setup is working, while the walls are painted with beautiful murals that give the barest hint of the worlds that Oya’s capable of creating.

“Is this a gloves and goggles kind of thing?” Hopps asks warily.

“Usually I would send people the program via their HUDs, but I wanted something a little more personal for us, given the nature of this particular program.” Oya begins to bring out a stack of meditation cushions and mats that, if possible, make Hopps roll her eyes harder than the notion of HUD involvement.

Lacy has first pick of the cushions and settles into one that’s almost like a bean bag chair, if bean bag chairs came with actual back support. Hopps flops onto her belly on a braided seagrass mat to their left and uses her folded arms as a cushion. The others take their places one by one; Oya closes the door and starts some soft music playing, dimming the lights until most of the illumination in the room is green.

It’s very soothing. Like being in code.

“We’re going to start with some breathing exercises,” Oya says, and she leads the group in box breathing for enough minutes that Hopps and Cass both get restless.

“Maybe we _should_ gear up,” Anton says. “I’m sorry, Oya, I get what you’re trying to do, but I feel like we’re kind of stuck here.”

Oya begins to rise gracefully to her feet, but Luma says, “No.”

“No?” half the circle asks.

“No.” Luma’s on Lacy’s right; she takes Lacy’s hand in hers, and entwines her fingers with Cass’s on her right. Cass takes Oya’s hand. Oya takes Anton’s. Anton takes Hopps’s.

Hopps looks at Lacy uncertainly.

“It’s fine,” Lacy says, their voice soft and small.

“It’s a _lot_ ,” Hopps says, her voice softer and smaller.

“I know.” Lacy puts their hand on the mat near Hopps, palm-up in offering. “It takes all six of us to make it work.”

Hopps puts her hand over Lacy’s, fingers closing firmly as though she’s about to arm wrestle Lacy, which would be terribly inadvisable.

The moment that the circle is complete, Lacy feels the surge of energy. Physically, the raw energy is strongest from Hopps, their literal lightning rod. Mentally, Oya boosts them all, uplifting them to their greatest potential. Cass contributes power of her own, the physicality of her strength transforming into an extra powerful push of energy. Anton bends the flow of energy, directing it to Lacy, who builds it within themself.

Luma lets out a startled gasp. “Lacy...”

“Luma.” Lacy tightens their grip. They can feel themself humming with energy. “You know better than anyone that things aren’t always what they seem.”

“Are you really _you_?”

“Of course. We’re all really _us_.” Lacy kisses Luma’s knuckles, gone white with tension. “We’re always together. Different, but always together.”

“Why?” Oya asks faintly. “How?”

“To learn.” Lacy looks around the circle at all five of her friends, seeing all those other versions, other _incarnations_ , of them standing in the soft green glow.

“To grow.” The visions double, then triple, bringing in alters of people who aren’t even in the room, but who Lacy knows she could reach out to with a flick of their mind.

“To teach.” Shion, Cobalt, Sal, Kostchie, dozens of others, and _their_ others.

“To remember.”

Cass lifts her chin, determination and understanding in her eyes. “Your dreams.”

“My dreams,” Lacy agrees. “Hopps’s dreams. Our reality.” They look at Luma. “Ask me one more time, Luma.”

“Tell us _everything_ ,” Luma says. She corrects herself. “ _Show_ us everything.”

And Lacy does.


End file.
